


Literal

by 7veilsphaedra



Category: Bleach
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-16
Updated: 2014-09-16
Packaged: 2018-02-17 14:30:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2312933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/7veilsphaedra/pseuds/7veilsphaedra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for 2010 Livejournal Sprinkkink prompt: war stories, reminiscing, hurt/comfort, calligraphy and inkbrushing on skin;<br/><i>"I want all this marked on my body. Where the real countries are. Not boundaries drawn on maps with the names of powerful men. I know you'll come carry me out to the Palace of Winds. That's what I've wanted: to walk in such a place with you. With friends, on an earth without maps."</i></p><p>— Michael Ondaatje, <i>The English Patient.</i></p><p>(Posted to update archived works on this site.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Literal

For someone generally candid and straightforward like Ukitake, attempts at being covert and stealthy were like using untrained muscles. It was no surprise that Ukitake’s first attempts were so clumsy and easily detected. He had become better with time and practise, but fate was written deeper than the skin, closer than cell membranes, nearer than breath … morning breath, in this case.

Ukitake knew all about breath, since the ongoing struggles with his had left him vulnerable to throat and sinus infections. He was sensitive to it, some might even say overly so. Trapped under an arm, stout and powerful as the branch of an ash tree, he experienced full-frontally how even the best sake turned sour and pungent after the night had passed.

But what a mouth! What a clever, unpredictable, talented and _filthy_ mouth! Ukitake couldn’t suppress a smile recalling the previous evening’s gymnastics. Liquid honey seemed to flow through his veins. A few muscles were still sore from being used for the first time in ages, but it was the sort of pain which would clear up soon enough with a little warm water and stretching.

As for heat, it was getting a little too hot tucked next to this hulking body beneath their down duvet. Ukitake tried to inch his way out from under the arm, away from his partner’s chest, almost as furry as one of Matsumoto’s boutique sweaters. He almost made it before Kyouraku’s arm caged, then snugged him even closer.

“Going somewhere?” A voice murmured — deep, smooth, and sexy as hell. It was the sort of voice which reached right down between Ukitake’s legs and caressed.

Ukitake tried to conjure up a diplomatic excuse. “I was just — I was just —”

“Sneaking off?” A single brown eye opened, as though it was too much effort to open the other. There was mischief in it.

“Yes.” Ukitake nodded, mesmerized, and then, irritated, “I mean, no! I need to—”

Ideas … an idea — his eyes strobed the room for one … any, and why was he suddenly acting like a bashful teenager? It wasn’t as though he and Kyouraku had never done this before.

The windows and doors had been left wide open. Fresh air and sunshine flooded the room, along with a few white moths looking for shadows to hide in. He and Kyouraku had been too preoccupied and busy the previous night to attend to details like privacy. Fortunately, it appeared early enough that they had spared the entire regiment an eyeful, and it wasn’t easy to peer around the doorway into the shadows of the room; someone would have to make a special effort.

“Hmm?”

“—Use the washroom.”

Ukitake found himself flat on his back, with Kyouraku’s lips nuzzling the silken skin between his jaw and ear. A hand, meaty and massive, splayed against his chest, then slowly drifted downward over the taut skin and muscles of his abdomen, leaving bone-melting relaxation in its wake. He was already starting to firm up by the time it trailed below his navel.

Kyouraku smiled. “Anything I can take care of?”

Ukitake tried to think of something witty and defiant, but his efforts were sabotaged by the warmth of this massage. When it looked like Kyouraku’s tongue was ready to join in, Ukitake threaded his fingers through thick brown locks of hair and pulled his head back.

“I’m dirty,” he announced.

“You certainly are.” The answering grin was too lopsided.

“No, I mean I need a shower badly to wash away the stickiness and grit, and you need to brush your teeth. All these things require getting up.”

“Nothing ever requires getting up.” Kyouraku lifted the duvet to take a closer look. “Not between us.”

Now that he had made up his mind, Ukitake brooked no further tests of resolve. He nimbly extricated himself from the bear-grip, and got to his feet, hair shimmering in the morning light. His nude body didn’t shimmer, however, covered as it was with ink and brushmarks the colour of bruises, one after-effect of the previous night’s activities. He looked down at it and groaned, “Good grief, I’d forgotten. No wonder I was so itchy.”

Kyouraku lifted himself up to a semi-recline position, leaning on one elbow. “Anyone ever told you what a fine-looking man you are, Jyou-samma?”

“Why, just last night I believe somebody may have mentioned it once or twice.” Ukitake smiled. “I’m surprised this didn’t flake off or rub all over your sheets.”

“Good quality ink,” Kyouraku explained. “None of this ball-point stuff.”

“If you hurry, I’ll let you scrub my back.”

Kyouraku collapsed dramatically against the pillow, as though Ukitake would be the death of him. He still pulled himself free of the covers afterwards, though, and rose to his feet. “Only you have the power to get me up this early.”

 

 

 

Kyouraku had centuries to consider the ways in which pens and swords are alike.

Brushstrokes and ink did not trouble him. There was a grace and softness of form to brushwork which corresponded to more carefully considered words, words which connected meaning to the images they captured from nature.

Pens were quick and cutting, and left their meaning behind in abstracted hatch-marks like thoughts, terse and abrupt. Kyouraku’s colleagues and acquaintances might think of him as lazy and slow to act, and he granted them that, but his friends and peers understood how much of that hesitation was rooted in careful consideration, the sort of thought that lent itself to hand-brushed calligraphy. As for typewriter or word processor keystrokes, they were a complete debasement — words clacked out sometimes without much thought or connection to nature that he could determine.

When Kyouraku saw his first pen, he thought it was a weapon. It didn’t help that Ukitake had flipped the device over so that the pointy end was lined up against his palm. Kyouraku couldn’t believe his eyes when Ukitake started to gouge the point into his flesh, injecting it with some sort of disfiguring substance, leaving ugly indigo marks, a tattoo which sullied the skin. It was as though some imbecile off the street had decided to imprint their chop on an iconic print, something like Hokkusai’s _Great Wave_.

Kyouraku leapt forward to wrestle it from the hand of its user, and put an end to this desecration. “What are you doing?”

As for Ukitake — the poor, deluded, damaged masterpiece! His mouth gaped as Kyouraku twisted the device out of his fingers, threw it aside, then seized his wrists and lifted the marked hand to his lips and tried to suck out the colour.

“Kyouraku-kun!” The shocked gasp barely registered. Kyouraku felt, rather than saw the feeble struggles to break free as Ukitake collapsed over his own solar plexus. Hair fell like a shimmering curtain of moonlight over Kyouraku’s shoulders. Breaths seemed particularly loud and harsh.

Finally, Ukitake lifted a foot, placed it squarely against Kyouraku’s chest and shoved him away. “Idiot, that tickles.”

“S-so-sorry.” Kyouraku reeled back, confused, but not as much, apparently, as Ukitake, who had raised a hand to shelter the lower half of his face. Huffs of air were expelled from behind it. Fire flared across his skin, blazed in his eyes, along with another expression which seemed to be confusion. “I thought you were damaging yourself.”

Fury instantly defused, replaced with exasperation. Jyoushiroh held up his hand, “I was just recording the time of our meeting with Yamamoto-Taisho this evening. What did you think I was doing?”

“Why would you disfigure yourself like that?”

“What? I was just jotting down the time. You know what happens when information gets passed along to Kiyone or Sentarou.”

Kyouraku was still baffled.

“You know how, when they get busy squabbling, it’s hit-or-miss if I can learn the time or location of my appointments. One of them will always try to become the sole arbiter of my schedule if I write it down on paper, and then it will get ripped to pieces as they both try to grab it away from each other. I’ve had to learn to improvise.”

“But the markings—”

“They come off, Kyouraku-kun. Look!” Ukitake rubbed his hand. Sure enough, the ink left only a faint smear. He walked over to the corner of the room and picked up the pen.

“What is that?”

“You’ve never seen one of these before?” Ukitake handed over the pen.

Kyouraku gingerly accepted it, weighing it between his fingers. “I can’t say I have.”

The other captain stared at him in disbelief. “Where’ve you been?”

Kyouraku shrugged. He couldn’t help not knowing about something he didn’t even know he didn’t know about.

“Honestly, Shunsui, if you don’t stop fobbing off all your office work onto your seconds, you’re going to turn into a complete anachronism. I don’t know how you could’ve gotten through the past two centuries without knowing about pens, especially ballpoints.”

Kyouraku grabbed Ukitake’s hand and tried to rub off the markings. The skin was cool and dry, and the ink didn’t smear. He raised it to his lips again. It came off with a little moisture well enough.

“I don’t need to know about pens.” The aftertaste was acrid. “I don’t like what they leave behind.”

When he looked back up, Jyoushiroh’s cheeks once again were hectic with colour and he appeared limp-kneed and panting again. Kyouraku’s heart leapt with a new and promising realization. “Although I must say, not _all_ its effects are unpleasant.”

 

 

 

Ink, as it washed down the drain, left indigo spirals on the tiled bathroom floor, like the patterns on peppermint candies. Jyoushiroh watched them swirl away. The brushmarks did not completely leave his skin. They didn’t leave behind bold, graphic marks, like the tattoos on the 6th Gotei’s irrepressible Second, but faded imprints like bruises, like fate, like the consequences of decisions made prior to wisdom, semi-permanent and almost impossible not to notice.

“Tell me how you persuaded me to let you pull this stunt again?” Jyoushiroh scrubbed furiously, almost taking off the first layer of skin in his wrath and frustration.

“Let me.” Kyouraku plucked the brush from his grip and picked up a soft washcloth instead. “Just relax and let someone else take care of you for once.”

“It’s pathetic how little resistance I have to you.” Jyoushiroh grumbled, allowing himself to be turned around and pushed down onto a seat. The showerhead directed a steady stream of hot water over him, as Kyouraku worked the soft cloth over every inch of his body, releasing knots of tension he didn’t even know he was holding.

Clouds of steam and the deep massage worked together to loosen old blockages and congestion in Jyoushiroh’s lungs and bronchia, and Kyouraku held and supported him as the noisome fluid eventually started to stream out and down the drain, along with injuries, conflicts, obstacles and resentments, both ancient and new, he didn’t even know he had been harbouring. It was as though parts of his past were being scrubbed clean along with his chest and skin. Without literally reaching in and scooping it out, Kyouraku was helping Jyoushiroh to let go.

Old half-forgotten memories poured free: the vulnerability of his siblings, the death of Kaien and countless other loved ones over the years, the unreasonable and often deadly requests of peers and colleagues, things which were written indelibly upon his skin with invisible ink, but which left behind visible marks all the same.

It stopped just shy of the point where Jyoushiroh would become racked with coughing, where the fragile membranes of his lungs would fill with lesions as seams of old scars tore apart, but he was thoroughly drained. He sagged against Kyouraku.

It was Kyouraku who, with his strong, powerful hands, washed away the ink he had used to play with him during their evening together, along with the past and the worst effects of his illness. It was Kyouraku who towelled him off with soft clothes, and even wrapped him in the duvet while carefully brushing his hair until it was completely dry. It always seemed to be Kyouraku who picked him up and carried him back to bed. Jyoushiroh could not remember having done that once for him.

But Jyoushiroh stopped Kyouraku before he lay down, presumably, beside him to let him sleep. He placed his hand on Kyouraku’s forearm, shook his head, pulled himself onto his knees and lifted his hips in invitation. He was too languid to notice much more than the gleam in Kyouraku’s eyes, but soon afterward, pillows were piled under him, he was carefully opened and Kyouraku was moving inside him.

 

 

 

"What did you write on me that night?" Jyoushiroh eventually asked him. They were enjoying some cool handcrafted sake and small plates of katsudon and other finger foods by the river. Dandelion clocks unloosed their seeds in the breeze around them.

"Sorry?"

"The words you wrote on me, what were they?" Jyoushiroh handed over a plate of morsels.

"Oh, I didn't write anything specific." Kyouraku popped a tiny onigiri parcel seasoned with umeboshi into his mouth.

"No? You didn't write "Property of Kyouraku Shunsui" or "Mine" or something similar?"

Shunsui choked a little on the food. "Why? Did you want me to mark you like that?"

"Of course not!" Jyoushiroh skewered a gyoza and lobbed it at him. "It just seems like something you'd write. I'm just curious."

"I'll try to remember that for next time," Kyouraku deftly caught the missile and set it on his plate. "The brush left behind lines which reminded me of feathers. So I drew wings. You see, the first time I saw you happened to be on a very cold and misty winter day, and you emerged from this fogbank like something spectral. I could barely tell where you left off and the clouds began. It made me feel like I was wheeling seven thousand feet over the surface of the earth. That's all."

Jyoushiroh stared, bereft of words.

_— fin —_  



End file.
